Samuel Logan is author of This is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America’s Most Violent Gang (Hyperion, 2009), which has been optioned by Paramount Vantage to be made into a major motion picture.

As a member of the HarperCollins Speakers Bureau, Samuel is regularly invited to provide briefings to US Intelligence Agencies, NGOS, Universities, and conventions around the United States.

His work has attracted members of the Inter-American Dialogue, the Eurasia Group, the RAND corporation, Control Risks Group, The Olive Group, StratFor, the European Security Institute, the International Crisis Group, agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs and Border Patrol, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, analysts with US Southern Command, the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the Federation of American Scientists, Blackwater USA, and other organizations that maintain open channels of dialogue with him about the drug trade in Latin America and other matters pertaining to security in the Western Hemisphere.

CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the Council on Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, the Gerson Lehrman Group, The Nation magazine, France 24 Television, Swiss World Radio, National Public Radio affiliates and others have interviewed him about topics pertaining to the organized crime and the drug trade, and he maintains regular contact with correspondents who work for the British Broadcast Corporation, the Financial Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, the Economist magazine, and the Washington Post.

Samuel has lived and worked in Latin America for nearly twelve years. He has lived in Mexico and Central America and a number of South American countries. Samuel has a MA in International Policy and has studied the economics of black markets, organized crime, and Latin America’s criminal groups for nearly a decade. He has written extensively on organized crime in Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Central America, and Mexico. And with Jonathan Franklin, Samuel has published City of Death for Maxim, Addict Village for Penthouse, and Birds of Prey for Men’s Vogue.